Can't communicate!

I finally found out how to open chat through parental controls and did so a couple of days ago. However, it seems to be glitchy to the point of unusable for me. I'll be in a battle and someone asks me 4-5 questions in a row and I'm unable to type back. It makes me look rude and unhelpful and I hate it.

Am I not using it properly? I hit *O* and the box comes up with other players' comments and I click in the box and no cursor comes up or anything. I'll click and just start typing and still nothing happens. I managed to squeak out a *yep* in response to something once but it must have been an accident because I haven't been able to type anything else in since then.